Old cigarette vending machine

This has been on my list of street furniture to record for a while now.
I don’t think I want to say where it is, it would spoil the mystery. Its difficult to imagine that once, maybe when these old Arthur’s Hill terraces were first constructed, and smoking was everywhere, even in public buildings, cigarette machines were installed in the very walls of streets.

Do you see, how the command

CIGARETTES

has prompted obedient passers-by to stub out their cigarettes and leave the “dog-ends” as instructed?

How much more obedient, to the command of advertising and peer pressure, did the young people of the twentieth century follow the prompt to smoke cigarettes?
We are dealing with the legacy of that wave of addiction, as those people addicted to smoking still haven’t been able to stop, and have influenced their younger family members to become addicted even in a time when no one would seriously think it was a good idea.

At the time when this antique artefact dispensed packs of cigarettes to reward those who had fed a few coins into the slots, there were no health warnings and not many were aware of any danger.